


Meep Morps

by PandoraTheExplorer



Series: Month of Drabbles Challenge 2018 [12]
Category: Steven Universe (Cartoon)
Genre: Character Study, Fluff and Angst, Gen, peri and steven are art buddies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-21
Updated: 2018-09-21
Packaged: 2019-07-15 08:37:15
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,331
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16059479
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PandoraTheExplorer/pseuds/PandoraTheExplorer
Summary: Steven gets Peridot some paint to make meep morps with.





	Meep Morps

**Author's Note:**

> Day 14 of my 2018 Month of Drabbles Challenge

Peridot sat cross-legged on Steven’s couch, clutching a sketchpad in one hand and twirling a pencil in another. Steven had gotten her these supplies to make meep morps, but she hadn’t had much inspiration ever since…

Ever since…

“Peridot!” Steven called, bursting through the front door with two plastic bags in his hands, “I got you some paint!”

Peridot watched Steven take out multiple little bottles, each colored differently than the rest, and set them on the coffee table in a row. Peridot didn’t know that bottles could hold paint-she had only worked with large cans back at the barn.

Hesitantly, she reached out and stacked the bottles in two pyramids. The bottle caps didn’t provide good balance, but she managed. If Steven expected her to make good meep morps from this paint, he was mistaken. These bottles were awful for stacking-and Peridot doubted they could hold goldfish or be strung up with a rope.  
Steven laughed when she told him of her concerns. “You can use the bottles when we’re finished with them,” he said, “but we’re really trying to use the paint inside.”

He opened a pink bottle and poured out pink paint. Then he showed her a stick that he called a “brush” that had-was that hair attached to it? He dipped the brush in the paint and pressed it onto the paper of the sketchpad. He dragged the brush across the paper and a trail of pink was left in its place. Steven moved the brush around for a few seconds and showed Peridot his product. The green gem gasped in wonder. It was a star-like the one on Steven’s shirt, but pink!

“I want to try!” Peridot took the brush and pressed it on a new page. She didn’t realize what she was drawing until she stared at the pink silhouette of a short boy with fluffy hair. Pink was such a nice color-it was cheerful and friendly and calming when something needed calming.

Peridot drew another pink shape next to the first one. This one was bigger and had curls spiraling off of one end. Pink could also be mysterious, she decided. It could be a color that drew adoration from some and from others hatred of the same intensity, and it would all be for reasons unbeknownst to Peridot. It was a color that was serene and perfect when you first looked, but will become messier the more you saw of it. After all, no perfect colors exist, and pink shouldn’t be an exception.

White could be the closest color to perfect. After all, white is required to be blank and impressionless. Its only purpose was to emphasize the contrast between different colors that should already know their places. But white had its own unique spots-places that were darker or lighter than others that some may call “mistakes” and try to erase. These mistakes shouldn’t have to be erased, Peridot had learned in her time on Earth. She painted a white line with a triangle on the tip. White was as much of a color as the other shades. It deserved to be treated as such.

Red-the darkest red Peridot could find in Steven’s bottles of paint-was calm and collected. It was the shade of the deepest, most intense love. Love-that was what Steven said Percy and Pierre were. Steven also said that he loved Peridot. She decided it was a different kind of love. But red was the color of the first kind of love. Red was proud of being red, regardless of who wanted it to be another hue. But red was patient, too, of anyone who wondered why it was red. Peridot drew a square. She thought she understood this color somewhat now. It wasn’t for Peridot, but red was a good color to be.

Purple was a good color to be, too, no matter how much it tried to be the contrary. Purple was loud and brash and prominent. Other colours could be painted over it, but purple will still show, no matter how much someone tried to cover it. Peridot drew a purple oval. Purple, when placed with a million similar hues, will manage to stand out as its own shade but still contribute smoothly into a bigger picture. When it’s alone with other, much different colors, it’ll establish its own identity. Purple was independent, even if it thought it wasn’t.

Orange was even louder than purple. It wouldn’t do well to be mixed with purple, but placed side by side, it created a wonderful contrast. Orange shone bright and proud-Peridot used to be told that orange was the perfect color. She drew an elongated oval and added a few spikes around it. Now she could see that orange was too angry. It was too proud of how perfect it was and looked down on those that weren’t perfect. That made it much less perfect, Peridot thought.

She painted a small orange circle. Orange can also be cheerful. Orange can love and be loved. Peridot knows that she loves orange-not the red kind of love but the other kind-as long as it’s in the shape of this small circle.

Beside the circle, she drew a triangle in green. After a moment of pondering, Peridot morphed the triangle into a star like the one on Steven’s shirt. Green, in her opinion, was the best color. It was calm and collected and immensely useful in a crisis. It was loving and heroic and intelligent. It represented an entire universe of knowledge, all compressed in one perfect green star.

But then again, no color was perfect. Green still had much to learn, Peridot decided, and much to improve.

On the corner of the sheet of paper, Peridot gently painted an hourglass shape in blue. Blue was lost, she decided. Everything was some kind of blue and this blue could have fit in everywhere-except it couldn’t fit in anywhere because somehow everything shifted colors so that this blue was now the wrong shade. And it was lonely because it couldn’t fit in with the blue anymore. But it didn’t want to stand out with any other colors, either. Blue just wanted peace-it just wanted to fit in. Peridot drew two crescents stemming from the middle of the hourglass. When blue didn’t fit in, all it could think to do was to fly away again.

Peridot gazed out the window. The sky was blue, but it was the wrong hue. She wondered if she could ever find the right shade of blue again.

“Peridot!” Steven called, heading back from the kitchen with a soda in hand, “That painting looks great!”

“It’s called a painting?” Peridot asked. What a strange name for this kind of meep morp. Just because it’s made partially of paint doesn’t mean it has to be named after it. If anything, this meep morp should be called papering, because it was mostly made of paper.

“Yup!” Steven said, “I love it. You drew everyone!”

Peridot stared at the paper for a long time. “Do you think Lapis would have liked it?” she finally asked quietly.

Steven froze in the middle of a sip from his soda. “I think she would,” he finally answered.

“I wish she could see it,” Peridot sighed.

Steven slammed his soda on the table. “Maybe you can!” he yelled excitedly. He rolled up the now dried painting and held it out to Peridot. “Bubble this,” he said.

It took a few tries, but Peridot finally managed to encircle the painting in a green bubble. “What now?” she asked.

“Didn’t your last bubble arrive at the barn when you sent it away?” Steven asked.

“Yeah, why-ohhh!”

Peridot stared at the green bubble and gingerly tapped it. The bubble vanished.

“I wonder if she’ll like it,” Peridot whispered, gazing at the blue sky once more.

~

Somewhere, millions of miles away, a Lapis Lazuli clutched a sheet of colored paper and longed for a home she didn’t realize she had.

**Author's Note:**

> This was written right after Lapis got the hell out of dodge and before Reunited. I guess it could work as a missing scene? idk


End file.
